Results tagged “UnderConsideration”

As a promotional idea for Brand New, our blog focusing on opinions on corporate and brand identity, we opted for a product that involved our ever-growing readership in its content rather than just forcing a product upon them. One uniting practice among identity designers — whether they do work for Fortune 500 companies or their local laundromat — is that of sketching logo ideas, typically dozens of them before refining them in the computer, so we decided to inquire about the different reasons of why designers sketch logos. With more than 300 responses through Brand New and Twitter we selected the most compelling 30 and produced a modest 32-page sketchbook.

Launched in May of 2009, FPO: For Print Only publishes highly detailed posts of greatly designed print projects by designers around the world. The web site, while it has its own visual flair, is designed to make the project overview, production details and imagery of each project the center of attention. Like the rest of our blogs, FPO runs on Movable Type and takes advantage of its “Custom Fields” feature to provide easy input of the varied information through the content management system while reflecting a consistent set of facts in the front end.

Because we had a great set of characters to work with — F, P, O as in FPO: For Print Only — we decided to render each of them as the size of a perfect square, so even if the type looks as if it came out of the box, it didn’t. The wordmark has an inline that can change color, which is something we do every two or three weeks on the website, where we also use the logo rather big giving us the opportunity to gently place the description of the acronym within the O. The text “For Print Only” is typeset in House Industries’ Paperback.

Initially launched in April of 2003 as a feature of our Speak Up blog, Word It is a monthly challenge for our audience to visually interpret a specific word we select; there are no limitations and it is not uncommon to receive over one hundred submissions in a single month. Over the course of 66 months and words we had amassed more than 4,400 submissions and decided to spin-off Word It into its own blog in March of 2009.

The logo or, in this case, the wordmark for the Word It blog is unapologetically big and bold yet, understanding of its context, very simple, allowing the hundreds of submissions to be the center of attention. Set very tightly together, the Word It wordmark uses House Industries’ Neutraface No. 2, Titling style. The wordmark’s generous heft, allows us to use it translucently in some vivacious Word It quilts.

It was unavoidable to attempt to find a visual representation of “opposite” with the logo for Opposites Attract ’08. After a few failed designs, we turned to Aleya Hoerlein, our winter, off-site intern who came up with the concept of using the O and A as circle and triangle, representing basic opposite geometric shapes — some might argue it’s the square that is the opposite of a circle. From that spark, we developed a modestly flexible identity — alternate configurations and an OA08 “badge” — with the typography reinforcing the “opposite” effect.

Opposites Attract ’08 is a four-part series of events, hosted at the Art Directors Club of New York, that UnderConsideration has ideated, curated and programmed. Opposites Attract brings together designers with differing paths, distinct backgrounds, assorted abilities, and unique approaches that, ultimately, strive for the same goal: simply, to produce great work.

One of the most popular features of Speak Up is Word It, where each month we define a word (say, “Garbage”) and readers submit a 5 x 5 in. square with their visual interpretation. All submissions—unless deemed deeply offensive—have been posted on monthly galleries, updated weekly amassing to thousands of archived squares of creativity.

The logo for Quipsologies, our linkfest of creative bits, uses a custom drawn Q that’s as circle-y as a circle can get, accompanied by the geometrically pleasant Gotham. For more on Quipsologies read this entry.

Quipsologies, launched in January of 2007, is bent on keeping the design community aware of as many things as possible through an ever-growing cluster of creativity found on- and off-line. Quipsologies acknowledges that there is strength in numbers and in individual interests… everyone is invited and encouraged to add theirs — Quipsologies was born as a response to the increasing source of creativity found online and the desire to bring the most relevant to our readers.

Each year, Speak Up celebrates its anniversary by putting together Stop Being Sheep. A self-financed, twenty-plus-page, two-color, lovable booklet standing in at 4.5 x 6.5 in.. These publications gather each year’s most thought-provoking, amusing and enthralling commentaries that have been left on Speak Up, and are freely distributed among friends and peers and sold for a modicum price online to recuperate printing
and shipping costs.

Brand New, launched in 2005, is devoted solely to the monitoring, discussion and critique of brand and corporate identity work in all its manifestations and across all categories — Brand New grew out of the popularity of reviewing rebranding efforts on Speak Up and it now covers an even broader range of work as a dedicated site.

The logo for Brand New, our blog on corporate and brand identity, is bold and red. Few things are better than bold and red. It is set in Vllg’s Apex Serif Extra Bold Small Caps (all in lowercase for extra boldness).

The Design Encyclopedia, launched in September of 2003, is a user-built source of reference material with the sole intention of defining, describing, chronicling and documenting the world through design in all its implications and manifestations, from cars, to burgers, to movies, even to logos — it was built on the need for cataloguing the impact of design in our lives.

The logo for The Design Encyclopedia, our wiki devoted to all things design, draws its inspiration from the minimalist ideals of the Bauhaus, paired with one of the oldest sans serifs in town, Akzidenz Grotesk (1898!), with a little touch of CMYK for good measure. For more on The Design Encyclopedia read this entry.

Each year, Speak Up celebrates its anniversary by putting together Stop Being Sheep. A self-financed, twenty-plus-page, two-color, lovable booklet standing in at 4.5 x 6.5 in.. These publications gather each year’s most thought-provoking, amusing and enthralling commentaries that have been left on Speak Up, and are freely distributed among friends and peers and sold for a modicum price online to recuperate printing
and shipping costs.

Each year, Speak Up celebrates its anniversary by putting together Stop Being Sheep. A self-financed, twenty-plus-page, two-color, lovable booklet standing in at 4.5 x 6.5 in.. These publications gather each year’s most thought-provoking, amusing and enthralling commentaries that have been left on Speak Up, and are freely distributed among friends and peers and sold for a modicum price online to recuperate printing
and shipping costs.

With Speak Up celebrating its first anniversary, the first volume of Stop Being Sheep was born. A self-financed, twenty-plus-page, two-color, lovable booklet standing in at 4.5 x 6.5 in., that gathers the year’s most thought-provoking, amusing and enthralling commentaries. These are freely distributed among friends and peers and sold for a modicum price online to recuperate printing and shipping costs.

Born and raised in Mexico City both are graphic designers and co-founders of UnderConsideration, each with a decade of experience in various disciplines including corporate and brand identity, annual reports, business collateral, web design and programming, packaging, as well as magazine and book design. They are the authors of The Word It Book and The Women of Design with F+W Publications, and of Graphic Design, Referenced, a 400-page book, with Rockport Publishers.

They concept, produce and overlook all the work processed through UC.DOD.